Background

BOCC worked with Clubbing Ltd, an industry leader on the launch of a new social networking site for Clubbers in the UK.

This fun and exciting new online community encourages clubbers to shout about their experiences; film nights out for the 'Video Lounge'; share their darkest secrets in the 'Confessional'; and most importantly listen to the latest club sounds. The site will be a focus for people who enjoy going out and having a good time.

Our brief

Clubbing.co.uk had a very open brief with the objective of forming an innovative and engaging social networking site for clubbers. The site would need to compete with a number of other music and clubbing related sites, so needed to be top end and very slick in its design, with a punchy easy to use interface. Another key element was to utilise sounds and video to its best adavantage and bring engage with new technology on all levels. The site itself had to accommodate changing content so a scalable approach was very important.

Our approach

Our approach was to first develop a series of wireframes to describe the content that was intended to be used. From these we further developed an architecture for the site with various visual and interactive design ideas in mind. The next stage was to create various design concepts for the home page, which would set the tone for the site and address the issue that the site would be continually evolving.

This was achieved by using a simple column structure and a modular approach to the interface elements. Close attention was paid to the interface itself and a colour palette was developed to maintain a strong design identity that would hold the design throughout different page layouts.

Finally, each page was looked at using the colours and interface as a base and designed for it's specific needs and purpose. For example, both the Forums and Profile areas.

To address the use of new technologies we used our multimedia skills to include video, which was shot and edited by BOCC for YouTube publication and site placement. Music was included by the use of 'TrackIt Down', which allows users to both listen to tracks and purchase them online.

The philosophy of the site is to engage with its audience, listen to feedback and include what the user wants to see, this will be an ongoing process and will bring new technologies centre stage.

Standards

The following default standards have been utilised:

• XHTML 1.0.
• CSS version 2.0.
• W3C Level Double-A conformance to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0. (WAI-AA
• WCAG 1.0.)
• Designed to a minimum screen resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels
• Cross platform compatible with the following major operating systems:
  • Windows®
  • Macintosh®
• Operates in the following major web browsers:
  • Internet Explorer – Versions 8 and 7
  • Mozilla Firefox – Versions 3 and 2
  • Safari – Versions 3 and 2